In the span of a few hours, Sen. Pete
Domenici, R-N.M., ushered to the Senate floor a bill calling for
the permanent protection of the Valle Vidal, a 102,000-acre expanse
of high-elevation meadows and forests cradled in the spine of
northern New Mexico’s Sangre de Cristo Mountains. The Senate
promptly passed it — with nary a dissenting vote.
Domenici’s sudden, mid-November move came as a surprise to
Valle Vidal advocates, who had been working for more than three
years to place the national forest area off-limits to energy
development. The House unanimously passed its version of the Valle
Vidal bill last July. But the measure had languished for months in
the Senate, where Domenici, the powerful chair of the Senate Energy
and Natural Resources Committee, repeatedly deflected entreaties
from hundreds of constituents, 17 local governments, members of the
clergy, ranchers, former energy executives, environmentalists and
the National Rifle Association to protect the Valle Vidal, or
“valley of life,” from becoming a natural gas field.
Domenici, a longtime champion of domestic energy production, had
argued that it should be up to the Forest Service to decide how to
manage the Valle Vidal, which is part of Carson National Forest. In
fact, in a radio forum last fall, Domenici said that he believed
the Valle Vidal “is protected adequately” and that there was little
reason for the Valle Vidal Protection Act.
But a week
before Thanksgiving, New Mexico’s senior senator announced
that he had changed his mind, calling the Valle Vidal “a
magnificent and beautiful area.” That evening, the measure was put
to a floor vote, and the Senate unanimously passed the Valle Vidal
Protection Act, sending it on to President Bush, who is expected to
sign it into law.
The rest of the New Mexico delegation
had thrown their support behind the legislation. But Dave
Alberswerth, public-lands director for The Wilderness Society,
says, “There’s no way it would have passed without Domenici.
He was the key.”
Domenici’s turnaround on the Valle
Vidal bill is a matter of speculation among congressional staffers
and Valle Vidal advocates. Almost every theory has its roots in the
Nov. 7 election, just nine days before Domenici’s decision to
support the legislation.
Matt Letourneau, a spokesman for
Domenici, says the senator had withheld his support for the bill
until a congressional tangle over a pet measure calling for
expanded oil and gas leasing in the Gulf of Mexico was resolved.
House Republicans have been pushing to open almost all of the
continental shelf in the Gulf to development, while Domenici has
been trying to convince the House to support a more selective
Senate version.
“In his role as chair, he had the
national picture to look at, and one of his top legislative
priorities was drilling in the Gulf,” Letourneau says. “He
didn’t want his active support for protecting drilling at
home to weaken his position for drilling elsewhere. It certainly
could have hurt momentum.” Domenici was also influenced by the
overwhelming support for protection of the Valle Vidal from
constituents of all political stripes, and the senator became
convinced that waiting for the Forest Service to complete its
review of a drilling proposal would take too long, Letourneau says.
Now, with Democrats poised to assume control of both
chambers in January, even energy companies, which had favored the
House offshore drilling bill, are urging House members to pass the
Senate version in the current Congress, still controlled by
Republicans. The change in political dynamics has given New
Mexico’s senior senator what he sees as more freedom to act
on the Valle Vidal measure.
“I have been concerned about
being perceived as pushing for or even forcing energy production in
other states while saying ‘not in my backyard’ in New
Mexico,” Domenici said in a statement issued Nov. 16. “However, at
this point, I believe we can, and should, try to enact the Valle
Vidal Protection Act.”
The Wilderness Society’s
Alberswerth finds that explanation unlikely. “He’s always
been a proponent of drilling on the public lands, so I don’t
think anyone would have any impressions of anything different” if
Domenici had gotten behind protecting one small area early on,
Alberswerth says.
Other observers who have closely
followed the measure’s progress speculate that with Democrats
about to take charge in 2007, Domenici simply wanted to receive
credit for the Senate’s passage of the bill. Domenici’s
Democratic counterpart, New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, had said he
planned to put the measure on the table after he assumed the
chairmanship next year.
“I think Sen. Domenici wanted to
make sure he got credit for this wonderful Christmas present to New
Mexico,” says Jim O’Donnell, who heads the Coalition for the
Valle Vidal, a group of local governments, citizens, environmental
groups, hunters, ranchers and others who have led a long fight for
permanent protection for the area.
Martin Heinrich,
president of the Albuquerque City Council and a longtime supporter
of the bill, has a slightly different take. He believes the shift
in power left Domenici with “no real reason to hold it up,” since
the new Democratic Congress was likely to pass the bill next year
anyway.
But Valle Vidal advocates — concerned that
the measure would have taken a back seat to higher-priority bills
in the new Congress — had hoped Domenici would stand up for
the bill in the “lame duck” session.
“Our energy policy
and land management policy has been so mismanaged for the past
eight years that there’s so much to do … I just worried
that the Valle Vidal bill would get lost in the shuffle,”
O’Donnell says. “It’s really wonderful that it passed
this year.”
April Reese is a freelance writer
based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Environmental change.
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